UPDATED: April 6, 12:02 p.m.: Owners of as many as 50,000 units in 4,800 buildings will have to offer rent-regulated leases to tenants following a Tenant Protection Unit investigation.
The state body found that the owners had improperly removed the unit from the rent-stabilization rolls.
The landlords were also forced to repay a total of $2.25 million in rent overcharges, and will face three times that amount in fines.
The announcement affects tenants at about 2,000 buildings in Manhattan, 800 in Brooklyn, 700 in Queens, 500 in the Bronx and 20 on Staten Island, DNAinfo reported.
Delsenia Glover of the Alliance for Tenant Power welcomed the news, but told DNAinfo there was plenty of work is left to be done.
“I think it’s always a terrific thing when regulated apartments are returned to the system. But the issue is we have to stop rent-regulated apartments leaving the system in the first place.”
There are over a million apartments in the city that should be rent regulated and aren’t, she told the news service. [DNAinfo] – Ariel Stulberg
Correction: Due to an error in the source article, a previous version of this story identified the building owners in question as all having benefitted from the J-51 tax abatement.